” A mountain-size asteroid will zoom past Earth Monday (Jan. 26), marking the closest pass by such a large space rock until 2027.

Asteroid 2004 BL86, which is about 1,800 feet (550 meters) wide, will come within 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of our planet Monday — about three times the distance between Earth and the moon. While this flyby poses no threat to Earth, it does present a rare opportunity to get a good look at a near-Earth asteroid, NASA officials say.

Scientists are eager to study 2004 BL86 to pinpoint its orbit, observe its surface and even look for moons. The plan is to track the fast-moving asteroid using the 230-foot (70 m) dish-shaped Goldstone antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network in California, as well as the 1,000-foot (305 m) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. These radio dishes will beam microwave signals at the asteroid, which will then bounce off the target and return to Earth. [Photos: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]

” For objects that get this close, that are this large, the radar observations are really analogous to a spacecraft flyby in terms of the caliber of the data that we can get,” said Lance Benner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is the principal investigator for the Goldstone observations of the asteroid.”

In terms of global temperature, I expect the hiatus to continue at last another decade, but won’t pretend to predict year to year variations. In terms of U.S. politics, I expect the Republican dominated Senate to hold more congressional hearings related to climate/energy issues. I don’t expect much to be accomplished in the Paris UNFCCC meeting. And finally I predict that Michael Mann’s lawsuit against NRO/CEI/Steyn won’t be resolved in 2015.

I’ll come back to that last one – personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mann’s suit against me lasts as long as “the hiatus” and then some. And I’ll return to the first one, too. But let’s start with that third one – the upcoming Paris meeting of the UNFCCC. When I first started seeing headlines about the Pope pushing for action on climate change, I assumed the College of Climate Cardinals had had a whip round and decided to buy Michael E Mann a funny hat and a big balcony to make up for the implosion of his self-conferred Nobel Prize. But no, this isn’t His Hockiness but His Holiness – the real, actual Pope:

This March, following a visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis will publish an encyclical on the environment that insiders say will tackle the issue of global warming head on. Pope Francis is hoping to have some impact when world leaders meet to discuss climate change in Paris next year…

So the pontiff wants to get a piece of the climate-change action. Do carbon offsets qualify for papal indulgences?”

” You might not believe any of this stuff. But suspend your disbelief for a moment and make space for something incredible.

Let’s start this past summer, when a NASA scientist named Harold “Sonny” White unveiled an artist’s rendering of a spacecraft capable of shooting across the galaxy.

The spacecraft was theoretical, but the research behind it was real. For years White has been exploring the possibilities of actual “Star Trek”-like travel. He even named his ship the IXS Enterprise.

There are obstacles, such as forms of energy that might not exist. That’s a problem.

For NASA, yes, but also for the world’s scientists and Trekkies and time-travel obsessives (not necessarily mutually exclusive groups) for whom “warp drive” technology — once the stuff of science fiction but now generally accepted as a mathematical possibility — hangs like the most delicious carrot on the most spectacular stick in the cosmos.

The dreamers are out there. They attend space conventions and frequent online discussions and brush aside pooh-poohing issues over “causality” and “exotic matter,” and believe these questions must have answers. You just have to know where to look — because maybe the key to unlocking this cosmic mystery will be found in a place nobody expects.

Like here in David Pares’ garage.

You might call Pares (pronounced “PARE-is”) one of those dreamers, though what he’s doing goes far beyond the realm of online chatter. “

” Researchers have reconstituted a viral genome from centuries-old caribou feces frozen in the subarctic, and they’ve used the ancient viruses to infect lab plants. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, offer a rare glimpse of viral evolution.

Ancient viruses provide snapshots of past diversity and a way to trace viral evolution, but their concentrations are low and intact samples are rarely successfully isolated from the environment. Cryogenically preserved samples in nature may be an untapped repository of preserved ancient viral genetic material.

A team led by Eric Delwart from the University of California, San Francisco, analyzed viral genetic material contained in an ice core obtained by drilling through layers of accumulated caribou feces up to 4,000 years old in a permanent ice patch in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Caribou gather on ice patches to escape pesky flying insects and heat in the summertime. After eating nearby veggies, they deposit feces that contain their DNA, partially digested plant material, as well as viruses—which can remain frozen for millennia.”

The world faces record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a study.

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. But new research firmly rejects that argument.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

These classics sites are only the beginning . Go to Just English and you will find links for free books in many other categories as well , like children’s books , textbooks , math & science , plays , modern fiction , philosophy , foreign language , rare books and much more , all free and legal downloads .

” More than 60 teams competed in the 14th annual FIRST Robotics Los Angeles Regional Competition, considered the “Superbowl of Smarts” that culminated with an alliance of teams from three South Bay high schools taking home the top trophy.

The winners came from Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Redondo Union High School and West High School in Torrance. They will now go on to the FIRST Championships in St. Louis set for April 23-26.

“ As the competition went on, it just got more and more exciting,” said Michael Tamaki, 17, of West High School in Torrance. This was the first year the school’s team, with about 30 students, competed in the event. “On Wednesday, when we were loading everything for the trip, we weren’t expecting to get any goals in. But we just won, and it’s an incredible feeling.” “

” The mapping exercise produced what you might expect: an angry hot-head, a happy person lighting up all the way through their fingers and toes, a depressed figurine that was literally blue (meaning they felt little sensation in their limbs). Almost all of the emotions generated changes in the head area, suggesting smiling, frowning, or skin temperature changes, while feelings like joy and anger saw upticks in the limbs—perhaps because you’re ready to hug, or punch, your interlocutor. Meanwhile, “sensations in the digestive system and around the throat region were mainly found in disgust,” the authors wrote. It’s worth noting that the bodily sensations weren’t blood flow, heat, or anything else that could be measured objectively—they were based solely on physical twinges subjects said they experienced .”

” In his first State of the Union Address in 1790, George Washington told Congress, “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature.” He went on to call science “essential” to our nation. Two hundred and twenty years later, in his first inaugural address, Barack Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place.”

The president’s insinuation plays into the common perception in the media, electorate, and research community that Republicans are “anti-science.” I encountered that sentiment routinely in nearly a decade working for Republicans on Capitol Hill, and it has become more commonplace in the broader political discussion. Frequent offenders include Slate‘s Phil Plait,Mother Jones‘ Chris Mooney, HBO’s Bill Maher, a host of contributors at The Huffington Post, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

I’m the first to admit that there are elected Republicans with a terrible understanding of science—Representative Paul Broun of Georgia, an M.D. who claims evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell” is one rather obvious example—and many more with substantial room for improvement. But Republicans, conservatives, and the religious are no more uniquely “anti-science” than any other demographic or political group. It’s just that “anti-science” has been defined using a limited set of issues that make the right wing and religious look relatively worse. (As a politically centrist atheist, this claim is not meant to be self-serving.)”

This is a fine piece that acknowledges the bias inherent in the media’s coverage of science . For once the Left is shown to have it’s own science failings while it is demonstrated that Liberal media control of the press has resulted in very slanted reporting on the Right’s beliefs in science . There is nothing really new about slanted media coverage of the Right but just having this article published in the Atlantic is change , of a sort .

” Speaking to a crowd in support of Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe Monday, Joe Biden once again disparaged a conservative movement about which he knows precious little.

In his effort to demonize McAuliffe’s Republican opponent in Tuesday’s gubernatorial race, Biden trashed the traditional values embodied by the Tea Party movement, implicitly describing those involved as uneducated rubes.

The statewide race “has captured the attention of the entire nation,” he said, claiming the reason is a widespread disapproval of “the new Republican tea party.”

He went on to describe the patriotic movement as one in which “social recidivism is only outgunned by its hostility to science and technology and innovation and scholarship.” “

Crazy Uncle Joe must not have gotten the memo , but then again we guess it’s hard to stay informed when you spend most of your time locked in the basement .

On another note , what does it say about the dem’s confidence in their candidate if the feel the need to let Uncle Joe grab the mic ? He was certainly “without exaggeration” spreading the manure far and wide .

” Just as unmanned aircraft are revolutionizing the skies, Echo Ranger is changing how we explore, protect and survey the sea. Unmanned underwater vehicles have the potential to not only save lives, but also discover new areas below the surface.”

” Full moon falls on June 23, 2013 at 11:32 UTC (6:32 a.m. CDT in the U.S.). Thus, for many, the moon appears about as full in the June 22 evening sky as it does on the evening of June 23. This full moon is not only the closest and largest full moon of the year. It also presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. The moon will not be so close again until August, 2014. In other words, it’s not just a supermoon. It’s the closest supermoon of 2013.

We astronomers call this sort of close full moon a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month. Two years ago, when the closest and largest full moon fell on March 19, 2011, many used the term supermoon, which we’d never heard before. Last year, we heard this term again to describe the year’s closest full moon on May 6, 2012. Now the term supermoon is being used a lot.

How super is this supermoon? June 2013 presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth until August 10, 2014, at which time the moon will be a scant 5 kilometers closer to Earth. The full moon will come even closer to Earth on September 28, 2015 (356,877 kilometers) and closer yet on November 14, 2016 (356,509 kilometers). November 2016 will feature the closest full moon until November 25, 2034! Maybe this helps you see that supermoons – while interesting – are fairly routine astronomical events.”

” In 9 days, we managed to raise over 1 million dollars to go towards buying back Tesla’s old laboratory, and with the $850,000 matching grant from NY state this puts us at 1.85 million bucks. At its peak, the campaign was raising $27,000 per hour, crashing Indiegogo, and probably setting some kind of land speed record in awesomeness. Indiegogo put together this infographic showing some interesting data points behind the campaign.

” Earthquake-prone California is a far from ideal place to string metal over water and hope it stays put. But engineers of the new eastern span of the San Francisco–­Oakland Bay Bridge say the structure should last at least 150 years. This fall, when the new portion opens, the Bay Bridge will stretch 2047 feet, becoming the world’s longest self-anchored suspension bridge.

Unlike a conventional suspension bridge, in which cables anchor on shore, the Bay Bridge can’t rely on the surrounding muddy ground—which amplifies seismic movement—for support. So the bridge is anchored to itself, with a single cable looping around the roadway and held high by a steel tower. “

” As two yellow-helmeted electricians rise slowly on a hoist from the cavern floor to check cabling on a huge red magnet, CERN scientist Marc Goulette makes clear he sees cosmic significance in their task.

“When this refit is completed,” he says, gesturing across the gigantic Large Hadron Collider, “we shall be ready to explore an entirely new realm of physics.” “

” The collider is only 5 years old but, after swiftly finding a crucial missing link to support mankind’s main concept of the universe, is now entering a two-year revamp to double its power in the hope of making breathtaking new discoveries.

Some scientists predict it will help identify the nature of strange dark matter that lurks around planets, stars and galaxies; others that it might find a zoo of new particles or even catch hints that space has more than three dimensions.”